Or it's a combination of mental addiction and the placebo effect. The ritual has become such an important part of their life, that when they remove it their anxiety causes a physical reaction based on their concept of withdrawl.
This what is happening to the top level commenter. I don't know if the nightmares in particular are a result of REM rebound, but it could be that the person is simply prone to nightmares, and part of their addiction could be self-medication for their innately nightmarish dreams.
I would imagine that people report fewer dreams due to cannabinoids' memory effects, rather than an impact on REM sleep. Failing to remember dreams does not mean an absence of them.
An increase in nightmares could easily be due to increased stress/amygdala function depressed by cannabinoids.
It seems that there ate a ton of people speaking on behalf of both actual smokers and people with chronic illnesses and disorders.
If you don't have PTSD, you can't comprehend it, nor should you try to.
Top commenters issue is that they lack self control. Their "addiction" to weed is self imposed and akin to overeating or being addicted to masturbation.
When you stop smoking, you don't have withdrawals. You simply begin experiencing the chronic illnesses that you have been self medicating against.
I'd also like to add that for mental issues like anxiety, PTSD, and depression, weed acts like a mild antidepressant that is extremely manageable compared to the prescription options that typically make people even more unstable. Every antidepressant in America comes with a warning that it can increase suicidal tendencies, and I can tell you from experience that it is very true.
Those kinds of "medicines" work by making you numb, not treating the actual problems. You don't feel normal at all; you don't care about anything, become very reckless and unstable, and many kids end up killing themselves because of this mental state when they had taken the medicine to quell suicidal thoughts in the first place.
Next, PTSD can cause flashbacks in several forms. Many people with the illness never have harmful flashback dreams.
I said that this is causing a mental addiction. So on top of everything effecting people differently, these require particular forms of thinking. If you don't know that marijuana can suppress dreams or use it for that purpose, you won't develop this addiction.
A mental addiction isn't a "lack of self control" or "self imposed" as you say. It works by a similar means to the placebo effect, where your belief that something has an effect leads to the effect.
>It seems that there ate a ton of people speaking on behalf of both actual smokers and people with chronic illnesses and disorders.If you don't have PTSD, you can't comprehend it, nor should you try to.
Seems to me that you shouldn't assume what diseases other people have suffered from. As you aren't the only one with first hand experience.
>Those kinds of "medicines" work by making you numb, not treating the actual problems
Though it's true that the prescribed alternatives are not cures, neither is marijuana. Both help you manage symptoms, but can lead to other problems. Therapy has been the only thing shown to be effective as a cure.
edit Curious why people are objecting to this as I have personal experience in the area. Vivid dreams are common any time you go without dreaming for a while, it's not a sign of a physical addiction.
There are many drugs that aren't strongly physically addictive, but most people recognise that the misuse of those drugs can cause severe harm. Cannabis should be in this category.
With a physical addiction, the substance itself becomes necessary to the body. A psychological addiction involves becoming reliant on a perceived effect of some other stimulus. If you give a brain dead person a physically addictive substance and then stop, they will suffer withdrawals while they can't develop a psychological addiction as there is no perception.
Generally, the two will develop together and both are harmful.
There are a lot of people here speaking on behalf of smokers and people with chronic illnesses and disorders.
I happen to fall in both categories and self medicate.
I can and do stop smoking so the time. It is not physically addictive, and you can become mentally addicted to anything that gives you a dopamine release, like eating junk food.
I have never had "withdrawals," nor do I recognize weed "addiction" as anything other than excess, overindulgence, and a lack of self control.
People claiming that they are addicted to weed are simply looking to blame a bad habit for their lack of self control.
The only severe harm you can get from smoking too much weed is to your wallet.
Many people waste away their lives stoned and the problem seems to be getting worse while the quality of pot skyrockets to all time highs.
The country is going through a mental health problem, there are numerous signs of this. Marijuana is one of the poor ways that people deal with this, but it's not the cause of the issue.
Michael Phelps can down McDonald’s but some are better off limiting their fast food intake. Everyone reacts differently to different arrangements of chemicals in different quantities.
>That you experience significant physical withdrawal symptoms from marijuana certainty calls into question the street wisdom that pot isn’t (physically) addicting.
My buddy just quit for a month. The only issues he had were having to deal with his terrible IBS without what had effectively become medicine for him.
I smoke for similar reasons and for anti anxiety. It is FAR less harmful than brain melting benzos like xanax and Klonopin.
Wanna talk about harm? When I was prescribed Klonopin, I essentially blacked out for a month of my life. I didn't "wake up" from that until I missed a dose and promptly tossed it in the trash.
If you are so concerned with some nitpicky level of subjective "harm," maybe we should talk about all the harm prescription drugs can cause. When you have chronic illnesses and the medicine only makes you worse, self medication becomes an enticing prospect.
What about kids with severe seizures, etc? We've seen some of the most conservative states allow cbd oil because it is the only thing that works.
If you have an open mind, you should look into the endocannabinoid system that resides in every human being. We have a massive network of receptors that rely on cannabinoids to mediate chronic illnesses and reduce inflammation in our bodies.
It is thought that we have this system and relationship with cannabinoids because humans have been cultivating and consuming marijuana for thousands of years. Weed and humans have developed alongside each other over time in a kind of symbiotic relationship. To simply pretend that weed is some sort of harmful narcotic is so far from the truth.
Excess is the issue. A person who let's weed run their life is no different than someone that overeats or procrastinates constantly. If you have bad habits and no self control you can take anything to excess.
If people experience significant physical withdrawal symptoms from cessation of pot use (which seems to be the case for some), then for those people, it absolutely is physically addicting.